Cross-Reference to a Related Application
This application is related to Ser. No. 208,302, "Color Imaging Apparatus Employing a Horizontal Stripe Color Filter to Reduce Rise-Time Artifacts," filed on even date herewith in the name of Kenneth Parulski and assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to the field of color video recording and reproduction and, more particularly, to a video camera having a single, multi-color image sensor and a monochrome replay capability.
2. Description Relative to the Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 4,456,931 discloses an electronic camera having a monitor that can display the image signals before recording them in a memory. The monitor as disclosed processes whatever signals the camera generates which, for a high resolution image sensor, can represent more information than the monitor needs. On-camera monitoring can typically be accomplished with less than a high-quality, full resolution image. Indeed, a typical miniature image monitor for a camera can only produce a relatively lower resolution image. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,691,253, this limitation is accommodated by purposely processing only a low resolution representation of an image. The camera as disclosed is also capable of producing high resolution still images in digital format. A selected fraction of the digital composite image signal comprising the low resolution representation is directed to a mini-buffer memory. The signal from the mini-buffer memory is then displayed by an electronic CRT viewfinder.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,541,010 describes an electronic camera for recording still photographs at high resolution while allowing for low resolution preview compatible with the standard television frame rate. In this case, a special image sensor is required, which includes a high resolution sensing array separated from a smaller low resolution storing array by special shift registers. A sample of the high resolution image is transferred through the shift registers into the low resolution array for preview. The high resolution array is superposed by vertical color stripes, as follows (in part): EQU GRGBGRGBG EQU GRGBGRGBG EQU GRGBGRGBG EQU GRGBGRGBG
The preview image consists of image data from the columns of the image sensing array superposed by green filters--in particular, from pixels residing in every other column and in alternate rows. Consequently, the preview image consists of the low resolution array filled with monochrome, or luminance, samples. Since the high resolution samples are a line mixture of chrominance and luminance, it is necessary to have the special sensor structure (two arrays separated by shift registers) to rearrange the samples into lines of luminance.